Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, left, and Fabiano Caruana of the United States are no closer to a result in their world title match than when they started.
Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

The penultimate scheduled contest of Magnus Carlsen’s world championship title defense against Fabiano Caruana fizzled out practically before liftoff on Saturday, ending in a simple two-and-a-quarter-hour draw to leave their best-of-12-games match knotted at 5½-all with one game remaining.

Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana play to quiet draw in Game 11 – live!

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“I’m not thrilled, obviously,” the 27-year-old champion from Norway said. “I got surprised in the opening and just decided to shut it down. It wasn’t great but it’s no disaster. Now I’ve just got to play well in one more classical and see what happens.”

Said Caruana: “Nothing really happened today.”

Quick guide

World Chess Championship 2018

The players

Norway's Magnus Carlsen is defending the world chess championship against Fabiano Caruana of the United States. The best-of-12-games match is taking place at the College in Holborn between 9 and 28 November, with the winner earning a 60% share of the €1m ($1.14m) prize fund if the match ends in regulation (or 55% if it's decided by tie-break games).

Carlsen, 27, has been ranked No 1 for eight straight years and was considered the world’s best player even before he defeated Viswanathan Anand for the title in 2013. Caruana, 26, is ranked No 2, having earned his place at the table by winning the candidates tournament in March. No American-born player has won or even competed for the world title since Bobby Fischer in 1972.

It marks the first title match between the world's top two players since 1990, when Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov faced off for a fifth and final time.

The format

The match will consist of 12 classical games with each player awarded one point for a win and a half-point for a draw. Whoever reaches six and a half points first will be declared the champion.

The time control for each game is 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move 1. Players cannot agree to a draw before Black's 30th move.

If the match is tied after 12 games, tie-breaks will be played on the final day in the following order:

• Best of four rapid games with 25 minutes for each player with an increment of 10 seconds after each move.

• If still tied, they will play up to five mini-matches of two blitz games (five minutes for each player with a three-second increment).

• If all five mini-matches are drawn, one sudden-death 'Armegeddon' match will be played where White receives five minutes and Black receives four minutes. Both players will receive a three-second increment after the 60th move. In the case of a draw, Black will be declared the winner.

Carlsen, as white, played into Caruana’s Petroff with an opening line that paralleled their August meeting at the Sinquefield Cup, which ended in a draw. The American challenger and world No 2 was first to deviate, castling on the kingside (7. O-O) instead of the Nc6 he’d played in St Louis.

A briefly promising double-edge position took shape with (8. Qd2 Nd7 9. O-O-O Nf6 10. Bd3 c5), but Carlsen expended 23 minutes on his next two moves (11. Rhe1 Be6 12. Kb1 Qa5) and admitted he’d been thrown for a curve once more by Caruana’s exhaustively researched opening preparation and not for the first time during the fortnight. Eventually the champion offered up a queen exchange with 13. c4 and the ladies were off the board (13. ... Qxd2 14. Bxd2), abruptly stripping the tension from the affair.

Carlsen and Caruana played to a simple draw in Game 11.

“I wasn’t pleased from the opening and then after that I just wanted to play it safe,” Carlsen said. “I was trying to push a little bit, but it’s nothing real. In this match situation I thought there was no reason to go crazy.”

The action soon entered an opposite-colored bishop endgame which Caruana held with no problems before consenting to a 55-move draw after two hours and 13 minutes, the shortest game of the match so far.

The 11 straight draws represent the longest streak of games to open a match without a decisive result in the recognized 132-year history of world championship play. The previous mark was set during the 1995 meeting between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand, which started with eight consecutive draws before Kasparov broke through en route to a 10½-7½ victory.

The players will look forward to another rest day on Sunday before the competition resumes on Monday at the College in Holborn with Game 12, where a decisive result could lift the winner over the 6½-point threshold and determine an outright winner in the €1m ($1.14m) showdown.

“There’s a lot riding on the last game,” said the 26-year-old Caruana, who will play with the white pieces in a one-off that could make him only the second American-born player to capture the world championship after Bobby Fischer in 1972. “It will be very tense for both of us. I’m not going to go crazy or anything, of course, but I will try to put pressure on him.”

He added: “What can I say? It’s going to be a tough game. At this point the tension is sort of at its peak. If I knew what would happen I would tell you.”

Should Monday’s final classical game end in another bloodless result, Carlsen will be a prohibitive favorite in Wednesday’s tie-breaker, which consists of a series of games under tighter time controls. The Norwegian, who in addition to his No 1 ranking is the world’s top rated rapid player and top rated blitz player (compared to Caruana’s respective ratings of No 8 and No 16), is unbeaten in tie-breakers over the last 13 years.

“We’ll see what happens,” said Carlsen, who extended a career-high streak of 16 straight draws stretching back to last month’s European Club Cup in Porto Carras, Greece. “A lot depends on what (Caruana) wants to do. If he wants to shut it down then that’s fine by me, we’ll play rapid (on Wednesday).